> "A clock that ticks seconds irregularly but is accurate for minutes."

Sounds like something that could be tried as a fix for a kind of OCD (obsessive seconds counting).

Maybe, although it's actually giving me OCD, I think. It's really hard to tune out because of the irregular ticking. I implemented a regular mode to combat this, defeating the purpose somewhat.

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observationist 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Unpredictable things catch our attention - it's the exceptions that are important to survival, and our brains evolved to cope with the stimuli that this experiment messes with.

Something like this would be anxiety inducing for most people, I bet. That'd be an excellent experiment, track heart rate, EEG, and performance on a range of cognitive tasks with 2 minute long breaks between each tasks, one group exposed to the irregular ticking, another exposed to regular ticking, another with silence, and one last one with pleasant white noise.

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pinkmuffinere 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

what was the motivation for originally making it with irregular ticking?

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stavros 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It sounded fun (and it is)! My favorite mode is one that ticks each second imperceptibly fast, and then stalls for a second in one of the ticks (so that it lasts two).

It's just the right amount of "did that clock just skip a beat? Nah must just be my imagination".

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pinkmuffinere 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Ha, cool! I love the whimsicality of this

	▲	stavros 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks, I love it too!